(Along the way you’ll also find some helpful tips you can even use for your own store)

Aspect #1: Whether You’ve Chosen Good Products for Your Store

The right product is the “life-blood” of any store.

For Lucas, his products were kitchen gadgets. Sort of like kitchen “hacks” designed to make cooking easier.

The problem was, these so-called kitchen “hacks” can often be a trap. For 3 reasons:

1. It’s cheap junk that solves fake problems.

Unfortunately, the creators of these gadgets often invent or create “fake problems” that very few people have as an excuse to sell a product to merchants.

This anti-soup spill funnel is a prime example. Have I ever tipped soup from a pot and had it spill? Definitely. Did it happen enough that I thought I needed to go buy a piece of plastic to fix the problem? No. Instead I just got better at pouring the soup into my bowl.

Using the Amazon method I demonstrated in the video is a great way to “verify” whether a product actually solves a problem.

*TIP*: If you want to find products that SELL, make sure they 1) solve a REAL problem or 2) Adds an additional bonus to someone’s life.

2. There’s no niche to target your Facebook ads

Kitchen is a broad niche, so it’s easy to spread yourself too thin when running ads. Not only is it too broad – but you need to find the right product to promote. And promote it in the right way.

So what’s the RIGHT way to promote kitchen gadgets? VIDEO ADS!

If you weren’t shown how any of these gadgets worked, some of them could easily be mistaken for Star Trek props. A video of these items “in action” is the difference between viewers going from “What the hell is that thing?” to “SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!”

*TIP*: Use video when it’s hard to tell what your product does.

3. They are easily available in local stores

For example, a gadget of yours – a pineapple corer – can easily be found at supermarkets (next to the pineapples). Which makes it seem pretty mundane and reduces its “wow” factor.

My first concern was how low you’d priced your items for. As a rule of thumb, I recommend selling your items at 3x the price of its cost. This leaves you a 30-15% profit per sale after expenses.

Example: A mug costs $3 and sold for $9. For most winning items, ½ of the revenue from the sale goes towards advertising costs (your Facebook ad). So when we deduct the advertising expense ($4.50) plus the cost to buy the mug ($3) – we’re left with a profit of $1.50.

Now let’s do the math with one of the products you’re selling: Vegetable slicers.

You currently sell this in your store for $6. On AliExpress, the cost to buy a vegetable slicer is $2.75. When you deduct advertising costs plus the price of the item, you’re left with just $0.25 profit. Which isn’t even close to making a “decent” profit.

*TIP*: Go through and check the prices of your items to make sure that they are priced high enough to be profitable.

Aspect #3: Your Store Design and Branding

Here’s the brutal truth: Your store lacks in branding and purpose.

It’s clear that your store is designed to solve annoying problems and make cooking easier using kitchen “hacks.” Yet, you fail mention ANY of this on your site.

Instead, you talk about how you’re here to help people “design a kitchen” in “their own way.”

*TIP*: Change the language on the site to not only reflect WHAT you’re selling, but to make it look like you’re passionate about it too.

On the plus side though, you did an awesome job in adding trust badges and emphasizing the benefits in your product description copy.

But now to take your store from “good” to “great” – consider the following areas:

*Your trust emblems are placed awkwardly. Align them to the left with the text and “buy” button to give it that professional look

*Get rid of ANY low quality images in your product listing that look pixelated. You can often find it just by doing a Google image search for the title of the AliExpress item you want to sell.

*Add a favicon to your store. A great image for that would be your logo image. So just take this and turn it into a favicon!

Personally, I would always calculate product costs and shipping charges with the ORIGINAL-NORMAL prices that show up in AliExpress, because the above prices you showed were a special discount for a few days from AliExpress (I am talking about the Onion Slicer btw). That way, you already have calculated your profit, and when there is a special discount (the ones that are for 2-3 days in AliExpress), you end up increasing your profits, without having to touch your original MSRP (which was calculated with the normal prices)…

When I saw the soup pourer I thought just use a ladle why pour the soup out. Same with the avocado slicer. My wife has been eating avocados for over 40 years so she uses a knife plus a spoon isn’t dangerous. I like the sites design though, very nice. Good review Sarah.

Hi Sarah, great video as always. I followed your step by step guide on starting a Shopify dropshipping store and started mine last month 🙂 However, I am struggling to get traffic / sales from my store. Was hoping if you can do a brutally honest review of my store? Link is https://thehappycerberus.com. Thanks!

You guys did a good job but if you were making 10K per month – why are you wearing the same dress in each video ?!?! STOP wearing H&M – 20 $ dresses. If you think you need a dresser or a professional costume designer – we would be more than happy to help you!